Civil Rights - FP3 - Resistance Flashcards
AA and the New Deal
Depression hit AA particularly hard - FDR administration tends to increasing needs of AA through prominent individuals in AA community
50 AA in senior positions in gov departments
NAACP
1930 - Walter White leader - civil rights coalition with trade unions, churches, liberals
sustained pressure from NAACP leads to anti-lynching bills 1937 and 1940
Mobilisation of southern blacks - 1941 national committee to abolish the poll tax
Protests against segregated lunch counters Kansas and Iowa
Charles Houston 1934 and Thurgud Marshall 1936 - Litigation leads and focus
Black Cabinet
By mid 1935 45 AA in executive departments and new deal agencies
Foremen 1933 FDR special advisor on economic status replaced by his black assisstant Weaver
Bethune leading activist and director of Division of Black Affairs - worked at NYA until its demise 1943 and 1936 chairperson of informal black cabinet
Civil service x 3 know of AA in employment 1932-41 150,000
White American Allies
Ickes FDR’s secretary of the interior 1933-46 and president of Chicago branch of NAACP
Hopkins supervises new deal programs such as FERA, WPA, NYA - establish policies making racial discrimination illegal
March on Washington 1941
Summer 1941 due to war black labour needed yet over 50% of defence employers said they wouldn’t hire black workers and in 1940 AA made up less than 2% of employees in expanding aircraft industry
AA quest for justice expressed in march on Washington movement spearheaded by Randolf
Press predict 100,000 people would march and FDR fears a riot - meeting with Randolf and Walter White June 1941 leading to executive order 8802 banning racial discrimination in defence industries and march called off - FEPC also set up
Eleanor Roosevelt: Influence and the Press
348 press conferences - highlighted plight of young people and AA
Recived 300,000 letters post 1933 and fowarded those to Harry Hopkins etc, that described the AA plight
1940 promoted National Sharecroppers Week and National Committe to Abolish the Poll Tax
Spoke out against lynching at the Second Congress of Negro Youth 1939 and personal friend of Bethune
Eleanor Roosevelt: High profile gestures
Marion Anderson prominent AA opera singer denied singing in Constitution Hall as segregated - after lobbying of White, Ickes and Roosevelt, Anderson sang for 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial
1938 founding of biracial Southern Conference of Human Welfare - Eugene Connor attempts to enforce segregation but Eleanor sits next to black delegates
Eleanor Roosevelt: Criticism
FDR sent his wife to negotiate with Randoph etc following March on Washington - her alienation of white Southerners brought her opponenets and teh President and his aides often felt irritation at her interventions
